


Revisionist history

by SnufflestheBear



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Help I can't stop writing Timeless fic, I think I have a problem, It has to happen sometime, Jessica Lives, Weird things happen when you time travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 00:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8469418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnufflestheBear/pseuds/SnufflestheBear
Summary: The team arrives back in present day to find that everything is different.Warning: This one ends with some unanswered questions. Oh, and there's one use of a mildly bad word.





	

The second Rufus opens the doors to the lifeboat, Lucy leans out, shouting, “We need a medic!”  
  
She hops out, reaches up and helps Wyatt clamber down while Rufus guides him from above. Once he’s safely on the ground, leaning heavily against the lifeboat, she whirls to approach their welcoming party. “Wyatt got hit by a –“  
  
She stops short. She’d expected to see a couple of medics and some other assorted concerned-looking staff. What she actually sees is two security men pointing guns in her direction and Agent Christopher striding toward her with an expression that’s seesawing between horror and rage.  
  
“What the _hell_ are you doing?!” Agent Christopher shouts.  
  
Rufus has just finished climbing out of the lifeboat, turns and stops short at the sight of the guns, just like Lucy did. “…What…?” he manages weakly.  
  
“ _Who is that_ ,” hisses Agent Christopher, stabbing a finger toward Wyatt, “and where the hell is Gary?”  
  
Lucy looks behind her, just to check. Wyatt is still Wyatt, even if he is pale and silent and swaying on his feet, blood trickling from a gash on his head, breathing in sharp, shallow pants. She and Rufus glance at each other, then turn back to Agent Christopher.  
  
“Who is _that_?” Rufus asks, pointing at Wyatt, just to check.  
  
“Yes, Mr Carlin, who is that? What are you thinking, bringing civilians back here? And where is Gary?!”  
  
Lucy looks at Rufus. She can’t quite get past the blank incomprehension at what Agent Christopher is implying. Rufus can, though. He doesn’t look confused. He looks horrified. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, no.”  
  
Agent Christopher finally seems to realise that whatever is wrong is not wrong in the way that she thinks it is. She waves at the marines, who lower their guns, and says, “What’s going on here?”  
  
“Wyatt got hit by a car,” says Lucy. She doesn’t want to think about his total lack of reaction to men pointing guns at them and what that might mean about his condition.  
  
“Wyatt,” Agent Christopher repeats, her strained tone belying her patient exterior.  
  
“Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan,” Rufus says, and Lucy finally realises what’s happening.  
  
“Oh no,” she says. She backs up to the lifeboat and puts a hand protectively on Wyatt’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem to notice; his head is down and his right hand is clutching the lifeboat; his left arm is wrapped around his ribs.  
  
“Logan,” says Christopher, her brow furrowed. “That sounds familiar.”  
  
Rufus sags with relief and she wonders why for a second before she realises – if the name is familiar, that means Wyatt still exists.  
  
Christopher is nodding. “Yes. Delta Force. We considered him, but we decided against using a soldier with –”  
  
Apparently this is about as much as Wyatt can take. His legs give out and he slides to the ground and lies there, motionless.  
  
Finally, Agent Christopher calls for a medic.  
  
*  
  
Agent Christopher makes a valiant attempt to convince them to stay behind and be debriefed, but Lucy and Rufus are adamant – they are going to the hospital with Wyatt. They have to, because no one at Mason Industries recognises him, and that means everything is weird and wrong and they are staying together no matter what. The debriefing happens by phone, on the way to the hospital and then while the doctors are running tests and scans and God knows what else.  
  
Lucy can’t figure it out, not while she’s talking to Agent Christopher and not after she hangs up. The past, or at least their most recent slice of it, is as it should be – as far as she can tell, no one died who wasn’t supposed to die, and no one lived who wasn’t supposed to live. The assassination attempt on Reagan failed, as it was supposed to. Yes, there was a car chase through D.C. that hadn’t happened before, and a driver who’d seemed quite traumatised after running over Wyatt. Still, there’s nothing that could account for Agent Christopher’s insistence that Wyatt never joined the team, that when they left on their mission – on all their previous missions – they’d been accompanied by a man named Gary… something. Something with a C.  
  
She paces the waiting room, from the vending machine to the armchairs to the exit. Rufus paces too, in the opposite direction, exit to armchairs to vending machine. He’s chewing his lower lip, eyes fixed on a point near the ceiling. Eventually, he says, “What happened to Gary?”  
  
She doesn’t stop moving, but she does look at him. “What?”  
  
He closes his eyes, leans his head against the vending machine for a moment. “Gary. Gary the guy who went on this last mission with us, who got on the lifeboat with us and…”  
  
“He didn’t get on the lifeboat with us,” Lucy snaps, suddenly angry. She doesn’t know Gary. Wyatt got on the lifeboat with them, Wyatt with his slow smile and his habit of buckling her seat belt and his way of saying exactly the right thing when she’s afraid.  
  
“Yeah, I know,” says Rufus. He pulls some change out of his pocket and starts feeding it into the machine. “Not with us, but as far as the people at Mason Industries are concerned, the us that left on this mission is not the same us that came back. So what happened to Gary? Is he just… gone? Is he trapped in the past? Are we… are we even in the right universe?” He punctuates the question by hitting a button; the machine obediently spits out a Coke.  
  
Her mouth opens and shuts; after a second, she shakes her head. “I don’t want to think about it right now.”  
  
As if on cue, a doctor appears in the doorway next to the vending machine. She gives them a reassuring smile, says something that Lucy doesn’t bother to listen to, though Rufus seems to give an appropriate answer. Lucy doesn’t care what the doctor has to say; she just wants to see Wyatt, to reassure herself that he’s still real.  
  
The doctor shows them to an examination room, says something about collecting test results, and disappears. Wyatt is inside, sitting upright on the bed, bare feet dangling over the side and hands gripping the mattress. He’s not wearing a shirt, and her horror at the spectacular bruising and scrapes covering his torso is almost enough to drown out her extremely embarrassing appreciation of the view. She has absolutely no idea what to say.  
  
Fortunately, Rufus takes point. “Hey,” he says. “That looks like it hurts.”  
  
Wyatt smiles at them. There’s a slightly glassy look in his eyes, which aren't quite focused, but his head is bandaged, the blood is cleaned up, and he looks a lot better than – well, than when he was passed out on the floor. “Hi,” he says. “What are you guys doing here?”  
  
“Just making sure you made it to the hospital in one piece,” Rufus tells him. “It was kind of weird back at the base with the whole ‘Who the hell is Wyatt’ thing.”  
  
“The base is kind of fuzzy.” Wyatt tilts his head slightly, winces, and slowly rights it again. “Remind me what you’re talking about?”  
  
“Oh, uh…” Rufus glances at Lucy, uncertainty making him stumble over his words. “Uh, it just… there was a… you know what, I think we should talk about it later.”  
  
Lucy can see that Wyatt wants to press the issue, but all he says is, “Yeah, okay. Honestly, I’ll probably remember the conversation better later anyway.”  
  
She realises that she can see exactly which bruise is from the initial impact with the car. He could have died. The thought sets her feet in motion and before she knows it she’s standing next to the bed, one hand clutching her coat and the other hovering uncertainly near his arm. He smiles again, takes her hand and squeezes it. Instead of letting go, he holds onto it, curling his fingers around hers.  
  
Rufus stands on Wyatt’s other side, examining bruises while he sips his coke. After a few seconds of silence, he offers, “Sorry we got you hit by a car.”  
  
“Wait, it was your fault?” In response to their puzzled looks, Wyatt adds, “Concussion. You know. Memory loss.”  
  
“In that case, no,” says Rufus. “It was definitely in no way our fault.”  
  
Wyatt huffs a laugh, then groans. "Ow." He closes his eyes, bringing his free hand up to massage his forehead.  
  
It dawns on Lucy that she still hasn't said anything - just ogled her friend creepily and then held his hand - but before she can think of a suitable way to apologise for her role in getting Wyatt hit by a car, the door opens and the doctor reappears, followed immediately by another woman, blonde - not dressed like a doctor, but it is after hours. A specialist, maybe? Lucy feels a jolt of concern over this possibility.  
  
“I’ve stitched his head,” the doctor is saying, totally ignoring Lucy, Rufus, and Wyatt for now. “The test results look good. Nothing broken, luckily, but there is some major bruising. He’s going to be very stiff and sore for the next couple of days, and you’ll want to keep an eye on the concussion, but as long as he checks in with his GP tomorrow, there’s no reason he can’t go home as soon as I’ve wrapped that ankle.”  
  
Puzzled, Lucy takes another look at the woman. If Wyatt is okay, why does he need a specialist?  
  
“Thank you, doctor,” the woman says, and something else, but Lucy doesn’t catch what it is because suddenly Wyatt’s eyes are open and his grip on her hand is painfully tight. She looks at him, and then it hits her. His expression gives it away – a mix of disbelief and hope and fear. He’s completely frozen, not even breathing, eyes fixed unwaveringly on the woman.  
  
No. Not “the woman”. Lucy swallows hard, carefully slides her hand free of Wyatt’s – he doesn’t seem to notice - and looks to Rufus for help. She knows he’s figured out the same thing she has.  
  
"A family," Rufus says, finishing Agent Christopher’s interrupted sentence from hours earlier. His face conveys about the same amount of shock as she’s currently feeling. "They decided against using a soldier with a family." He looks at Wyatt, reads his expression even better than Lucy can. “She’s real,” he says. “Wyatt, she’s real. You’re not seeing things, this isn’t a concussion-induced hallucination or anything. Okay? She’s real.”  
  
Wyatt makes a choked sound at the back of his throat, and manages one word: “Jessica?”  
  
The doctor and Jessica seem unaware of what’s happening a few steps away – of the enormity of the moment. The doctor is nodding, says “I’ll be right back,” and only then does Jessica take a deep breath and turn to the bed.  
  
“Wyatt,” she says, “I’m so mad at you right now.” The look on her face as she approaches the bed isn’t anger, though, it’s concern and relief and affection. “You just disappear in the middle of dinner and leave me alone with my parents and then I get a call that you’re in the hospital? There are better ways of getting out of family gatherings.” She shoots a polite I-don’t-know-you smile at Lucy and Rufus. “Last time it was car trouble,” she tells them.  
  
“This time too,” says Rufus. “I mean, car trouble. Because he got hit by a car.”  
  
Fortunately for everyone, no one has to think of a response to that; the doctor chooses that moment to return, tut-tutting, and pushes her way through the crowd to reach the bed. She starts wrapping a bandage around Wyatt’s right ankle and says, gently but pointedly, “Your friends are going to need to let you rest soon.”  
  
“I don’t think we’ve met,” Jessica prompts. Wyatt is still staring at her as though his entire world is either crumbling apart or being put back together, Lucy can’t tell.  
  
She realises a response is required. “Lucy,” she says, quickly, and gestures jerkily toward Rufus. “Rufus." Probably there's more she should add, but right now she just... can't.  
  
“We’re here because we work with your… with Wyatt,” says Rufus. “Or we will. I mean, we do, but there might be some paperwork that needs to be signed… again… I mean… He got hit by a car because of us, it’s our fault, so that’s why we’re here. He saved us. I’m sorry,” he adds. “That we got him hit by a car. Sorry about that.”  
  
Jessica gives them a bewildered but friendly smile. “If you were saving someone, I guess you’re off the hook a little,” she says, taking Wyatt’s hand.  
  
The gesture is apparently what was required to convince him that this is really happening – he lurches off the table, amid protests from the doctor, and wraps Jessica in a bear hug, squeezing her tightly. He’s crying, Lucy realises, he has tears in his eyes, and he's saying hoarsely, “I’m sorry. Jessica, God, I’m so sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay,” says Jessica, returning the hug as she cranes her head over Wyatt’s shoulder to give the doctor a questioning look. “Babe, it’s okay, don’t worry, my parents don’t really mind. Plus now they get extra time with the twins. It’s okay.”  
  
“Unusual emotional responses are a symptom of concussion,” the doctor says. “It’s totally normal, don’t worry.” She looks longingly at the trailing end of the bandage she’s halfway through wrapping around Wyatt’s ankle.  
  
But Wyatt isn’t finished talking. “You died,” he says. “It’s my fault. I’m so sorry, Jessica, you died because of me.”  
  
The concern on Jessica's face is replaced with real fear, and now the doctor also looks worried. Jessica tries to pull away a little, but Wyatt won’t move, just closes his eyes and clings harder. "Honey, what the hell?" she says.  
  
"Confusion is one possible side effect of concussion," says the doctor, but it's pretty clear that she's moments away from strapping Wyatt down until she can redo every test she's already run.  
  
Lucy looks to Rufus, but he shrugs helplessly - this is not something he knows how to deal with. So she puts on her best Angry Professor face, sidesteps around Jessica so that she's facing Wyatt full on instead of from the side, and, using her best teacher-slash-drill-instructor voice, snaps, "Wyatt!"  
  
Wyatt's eyes shoot open and he looks at her for the first time since Jessica entered. "Jessica's not dead, Wyatt," she says, sternly. "You _know_ that. Right?" She tries very hard communicate via body language that Wyatt is scaring the crap out of at least two people in the room.  
  
It takes a second; then he takes a quick breath and exhales hard and it's like a switch being thrown - concussed, shocked, resurrected-wife Wyatt is replaced abruptly with soldier Wyatt. His expression goes from half confusion, half panic to a reasonable facsimile of calm. "Right." He loosens his hold on Jessica enough for her to pull back, looks at her - for a second Lucy thinks he's going to crack again, but he holds it together, takes another breath - "Sorry," he tells her. "I guess I..."  
  
"Had a bad dream?" suggests Rufus.  
  
"Yeah. I guess fell asleep on the way over here and I dreamed that... Sorry, Jess, I didn't mean to scare you."  
  
Jessica looks at the doctor, who nods slowly. "Let me just finish wrapping your ankle and do another test or two, and then you can probably head home."  
  
"Great." Jessica smiles, clearly relieved, as she guides Wyatt back to the bed and prods him into a sitting position. She holds his right hand with her left, traces the fingers of her other hand gently in circles around his various bruises as she looks over the damage. "I bet the kids'll be so happy to see their dad they'll even let you out of their bedtime story tonight."  
  
Wyatt stiffens and he makes a strangled noise, a totally new kind of panic appearing on his face.  
  
Lucy gets out, "The..." before she remembers something Jessica said earlier. Twins. "Wow," she finishes.  
  
Rufus takes it a step further. "Holy _shit_."  
  
Jessica tilts her head and looks at Rufus with fairly obvious irritation. He attempts an explanation. "I - I just remembered that we, Lucy, you and me... we have to go. To work. Now. We have to get that paperwork worked out for Wyatt. And we have to find out who Gary is, and maybe where Gary is."  
  
He takes Lucy's hand and starts pulling her toward the exit, ignoring Wyatt's frantic, pleading look. "Bye!" he shouts, as they reach the door. "Bye, Wyatt! We’ll see you soon! Nice to meet you, Jessica! Sorry again about the car thing!" He pulls the door shut behind them and leans against it. His eyes are very wide and his mouth is open, but he’s not saying anything.  
  
Lucy leans next to him, staring at the opposite wall. "Wow," she says. "Twins. That's..."  
  
" _Huge_ ," says Rufus. He shakes his head, then straightens up and sets his shoulders. "Let's get the hell out of here and let Wyatt find out what he named his kids."  
  
"Yes," says Lucy. "It's been a big day. I think we need some processing time."  
  
They leave together, Lucy trailing a half-step behind Rufus. She keeps thinking about their first mission and how she felt when she got back to find that her sister no longer existed – had never existed. She remembers the lurch she felt when she realised that somehow in this timeline Wyatt never went on that first mission with them, and the fear that somehow he no longer existed either, even though he’d been standing right behind her.  
  
Wyatt's not gone, she reminds herself. More than that, he has exactly what he wanted and then some. She should be happy for him. She _is_ happy for him, of course, but it’s happiness with an asterisk that she can’t quite figure out. With a family to protect he'll have a very solid motivation to maintain the timeline; she's not worried about him leaving the team anytime soon. Wyatt still exists, he’s still here, he’s not gone… so why can't she stop a small, selfish part of herself from feeling like he is?


End file.
